User talk:XERXES.ai

Some notice that you were going to do this would have been nice. Just from gut instinct it looked at first blush that this was one of the worst spam bot attacks this wiki has ever sustained. Upon closer examination it looks like just a spell check bot. Please give notice of your intentions to make a massive number of edits in the future. lcarsos (talk) 18:51, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi Lcarsos - my apologies, I didn't realise that such a small number of uncontroversial fixes, which were all fully explained and marked as minor, would cause any issue? I try to keep good wikiquette on all the wikis I contribute to (minimum of 10 seconds between edits, manually confirming every change, obeying any wiki-specific policies and guidelines, etc) and acted entirely in good faith. Do you have any behavioral guidelines on assisted editing I could refer to should I wish to contribute further? Is the Community Portal a good place to announce any other minor corrections I see as beneficial? XERXES.aitalk 19:33, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, 97 edits by a brand new user in the space of exactly 50 minutes, all of which are marked minor, I don't know what could possibly seem spam-like about that. Let alone the fact that the general editor here doesn't break 10 edits every 30 days. If you want to get all sarcastic about this, I can volley right back.

The only problem was that I refreshed the Recent Changes page and saw 50 edits (this was in the middle of the event) by a user that had just registered their account. And, without any warning was performing massive amounts of edits within a short time. Yes, a simple note in Community portal/Coordination would have kept me from leaving the note on your talk page. To keep you from maliciously/innocently over correcting in the other direction you don't need to announce every edit you make, nor do you need to announce every 10 edits you make. But, within the realm of reasonability, if whatever you are doing is going to make Recent Changes look like there's a spam attack in progress, you might want to leave a note somewhere.

There is no central behavior guide here, because for a common lurker, it should be quickly apparent what the protocol is for not being rude. I'm slowly working on a Style Guide, but there aren't enough regular/new editors here to really warrant finishing it in any kind of method that reminds one of rapid forward progress. So, in the end, were your edits uncontroversial fixes: yes, were they fully explained: yes, were they marked as minor which is proper for those types of edits: yes, was it entirely in good faith: mostly but as a whole no, was it a small number of edits: no not for this wiki. There are very few valid reasons to go on a near 100-page edit spree on this wiki. So you looked suspicious. If you had mentioned that you are a regular editor here, and that this account was just for bot(-like) activity, that would have been fine; If you had dropped a note in Coordination that you were going to do this, that would have been fine. Do realize that on an average day, after you subtract out the manual spam fighting we do, there's less than 30 edits in that whole day.

Just adding my 2 cents here; I didn't read sarcasm in Xerxes' original answer. It looks like he was using one of the many cleanup tools common in Wikipedia and other wikis, so I assume he's a moderately experienced editor who simply overlooked the alarm that such edits could cause in communities less accustomed to such tools. We've all been new to MediaWiki once, but it's understandable that over time we lose a bit of the ability to relate to the experience of those less focused in automated maintenance tools in particular, and specific mediawiki features in general. So I think Lcarsos' answer was appropriate in content, but a little overblown in delivery. I am leaving this message just to make sure Xerxes wouldn't feel unwelcome around here (by getting a sarcastic and somewhat harsh answer to what --to my eyes-- was a honest, plain explanation of his behavior, which itself wasn't entirely shady to begin with), since every extra pair of hands is valuable especially in such a small wiki :) --Waldir (talk) 17:23, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Tools

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